And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.
Never has she known a night to seem as endless as this night.
There is not enough joy in the sound of mortal music, or the rejoice of children born, to make the dawn quicken like a pulse below the skin of the night. All the nights she had spent in the belly of the dark forest seem like nothing more than wisps of time compared to this cage of it. Even the feel of skin on her skin, a thing that should settle even the most feral of animals, only makes her feel like a creature caught in it instead of one free of it.
And if it makes her steps more prowl than a dance, as she moves like a willowisp in the crowd, the mortals are too drunk on their meager joy to notice. It is better, she thinks, that they see only the fragile spiral of her horn glimmering in the darkness.
It is better, in the end, for them to see the flowers blooming from the dead-charred wood in her wake than for them to wonder how it grows only from dead wood and not the ripe soil.
The dawn has not seemed to quicken at all below the horizon when the mortal, another one, crosses her path. She does not hear the croon in his voice but sees only the tremble of the air in his throat where it brushes against the pulse hiding there. She does not see the night-sky in his gaze but the white rim of it where a tear might puddle.
“No.” A rose grows in the ground torn up by hundreds of mortal hooves as she moves closer to him. It waivers in the breeze of her tail as it drags to curl around her hock. “I am what is left behind.” She smiles, her teeth bright in the flames dancing around them. Another rose joins the first, and another one after that.
“What are you?” A sheep blinks and it is to the image of moon flowers growing out of his jaw and unfurling for the very first time.
There is not enough joy in the sound of mortal music, or the rejoice of children born, to make the dawn quicken like a pulse below the skin of the night. All the nights she had spent in the belly of the dark forest seem like nothing more than wisps of time compared to this cage of it. Even the feel of skin on her skin, a thing that should settle even the most feral of animals, only makes her feel like a creature caught in it instead of one free of it.
And if it makes her steps more prowl than a dance, as she moves like a willowisp in the crowd, the mortals are too drunk on their meager joy to notice. It is better, she thinks, that they see only the fragile spiral of her horn glimmering in the darkness.
It is better, in the end, for them to see the flowers blooming from the dead-charred wood in her wake than for them to wonder how it grows only from dead wood and not the ripe soil.
The dawn has not seemed to quicken at all below the horizon when the mortal, another one, crosses her path. She does not hear the croon in his voice but sees only the tremble of the air in his throat where it brushes against the pulse hiding there. She does not see the night-sky in his gaze but the white rim of it where a tear might puddle.
“No.” A rose grows in the ground torn up by hundreds of mortal hooves as she moves closer to him. It waivers in the breeze of her tail as it drags to curl around her hock. “I am what is left behind.” She smiles, her teeth bright in the flames dancing around them. Another rose joins the first, and another one after that.
“What are you?” A sheep blinks and it is to the image of moon flowers growing out of his jaw and unfurling for the very first time.
